Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the...

Summoned to an inquiry in Belfast, asking him to give testimony about his participation in a disastrous event during the Troubles, ailing ex-soldier and recovering alcoholic Stephen Rose, just beginning to build a fragile bond with the adult daughter he barely knows, must finally face the consequences of his actions.

When the English town of York hosts a Jane Austen Society conference, bookseller Erin Coleridge is glad to get out of Kirkbymoorside for a while. When a featured speaker dies from an apparent heart attack, Erin is suspicious. As both Detective Inspector Peter Hemming and schoolteacher Jonathan Alder make gestures of romantic interest, Erin joins forces with Kirdbymoorside's cat lady, Farnsworth, to ferret out the guilty party. -- adapted from jacket...

As World War I approaches, Foreshaw Park, the run-down estate of the once-wealthy Thorman family, is the setting for the burgeoning romance between the Thormans' elder daughter, Agnes, and hired-hand Robert Bradley.

"An honest, affecting work of fiction about a young woman's search for her place in the world, Offcomer is the powerful first novel from the acclaimed author of Longbourn. Against the backdrop of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, recent Oxford graduate Claire is a mess. She's trapped in a disastrous relationship with a young academic, working a dead end job, stunned by the emergence of secrets from her mother's past, and seemingly addicted to self-destructive...

Ten-year-old message-runner Freddie Musgrove's silence is bought after he witnesses a scene of unremitting horror at The Towers, but years later, when the horror reoccurs, Freddie must fight to remain uninvolved.

A famed Oxford historian is found dead in his study one night, all evidence pointing to his son, Stephen, who was about to be disinherited from the family fortune. When Stephen's fingerprints are found on the murder weapon, his guilt seems undeniable -- but then, the revelation that the deceased man was involved in a deadly hunt for a priceless relic in Northern France at the end of World War II lends credence to Stephen's innocence.

It had never been the best of marriages and over recent years it had become effectively a marriage in name and outward appearance only. Yet, in the autumn of 1960, Winifred and Daniel Coulson presented an acceptable façade to the outside world, for Daniel had prospered sufficiently to allow them to live at Wearcill House, a mansion situated in the most favoured outskirt of the Tyneside town of Fellburn. Of their children, it was Donald on whom Winifred...

The story of growing up in the changing times of the Industrial Revolution of 1854. A young girl is abandoned to be raised by "Raggie Aggie" amidst the factories and slums of north England.